Monday, 31 January 2011

Egypt Unfolding

In the past several days, the dynamic of the protests in Egypt has changed rapidly, and not for the better. What started out as a genuine and positive pro-freedom movement is being steadily coopted by the Muslim Brotherhoodand other violent and extremist forces. There is now a growing risk that the overthrow of the Mubarak regime could lead either to an authoritarian military regime, or a Radical Islamist regime. We must pray neither scenario comes to pass. The people of Egypt would be further oppressed. The U.S., Israel and the West would be endangered....

.... For the first first few days of last week, most of the initial protestors on the streets of Egypt were peaceful, respectful, somewhat educated, and poor to middle class. I believe they were genuinely calling for an end to the Mubarak regime’s corruption and authoritarian rule in order to achieve more freedom, more opportunity, a better economy, more and better jobs, and a democratic government that would respect and protect their human rights and civil rights and set them free from the stagnant, stultified, oppressive Egyptian system they have suffered under for so long.

However, beginning on Thursday and accelerating throughout the day on Friday, the situation began to change dramatically....

Now the first bit of this next excerpt may sound a little odd coming from someone named Rosenberg, but that doesn't take away from the gist of his opinion. The quandry he describes is widely shared.

.... I find myself in a quandary. I strongly support the right of the Egyptian people to have free elections and free markets and true opportunity in the 21st century. What’s more, I want the Church to be free to share the gospel and win Muslims to faith in Jesus Christ, make disciples and plant new congregations without government oppression and without violent attacks by Radical Muslims. I do believe Mubarak has stayed too long. He has not responded to the yearning of the Egyptian people to be free. His day is coming to an end.

That said, however, I don’t want to see the Muslim Brotherhood win. For all of Mubarak’s sins, he is not a Radical. He doesn’t want to launch a jihad against the U.S., Israel or the West. He has maintained the peace treaty with Israel. He has worked to counter the Hamas movement in Gaza. He is strongly opposed to the Iranian nuclear weapons program and has worked closely with the West to counter it.

The Obama administration needs to be careful to support positive change in Egypt and support human rights there, without cutting the legs out from underneath Mubarak precipitously, the way President Carter did to the Shah of Iran in 1979. The Shah had his many flaws, no question about it. But Carter’s actions helped trigger the Islamic Revolution and led to the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the loss of an American ally, and the rise of a terror-exporting country that has gained in lethality ever since. We dare not make the same mistakes with Egypt.

Were everything equal, I would agree that "we dare not." But Obama's middle name is Audacity (you silly infidel... you thought it was Hussein?) so I'm not holding my breath to see if he does the right thing.

... it is imperative the administration provide a more robust and strategic response to these events, given what a new Egypt could portend for the entire region.

President Obama himself provided a blueprint for this new approach in his June 2009 Cairo speech. Many progressives, this writer included, were thrilled by what we saw as that speech's promise to move away from a Middle East policy in which political freedom was subordinated to the perceived imperatives of counter-radicalism, and toward a more measured opening of political systems to greater participation and accountability. Progressives have likewise been disappointed at the lack of follow-through. These continuing uprisings offer the president an opportunity to make good on that promise.....

.... Given the amount of right-wing energy being spent scaring Americans about extremist Muslims under their beds and "creeping Sharia" phantoms in their closets, such a shift in posture toward engaging with Islamists is far easier talked about than implemented. But this is a policy fight that the administration must take on.

Casting "Islamism" writ large as inherently violent and irretrievably hostile to democracy is not only incorrect; it also strategically short-sighted.

It deprives us of a potentially valuable tool for isolating and dividing violent Islamists like al-Qaeda, with whom we have nothing to talk about, from nonviolent ones like the Muslim Brotherhood, with whom we very possibly do....

Laura Rozen is reporting that Obama has invited Brookings Institute scholar Robert Kagan and former Bush deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams to the White House to discuss the situation in Egypt today

Comments

Joel C. Rosenberg is a born-again Christian whose father, raised in an Orthodox Jewish family, converted -- along with his wife -- to Christianity. Joel C. has been quite successful as a writer on the Middle East and as a novelist. For a number of years, he worked as a consultant to both Natan Sharansky and Bibi Netanyahu. Interesting background, to say the least.

To think that this mob in Middle East could create freedoms relative to western norms can only be seen though western ethnocentrism. It is ingrained in us to believe that people will always chose liberty as we know it. As such a belief such as this can only be explained through the fiat of ignorance, or the clouded vision of irrational emotive compassion.

I heard Joel Rosenberg speak when I was in Israel. He wrote a series of best selling novels that talk about the war of Gog and Magog and how that might play out if it were to happen in today's world (kind of similar in concept to the Left Behind books); I've not read them myself, but I did read his nonfiction book on the topic. Very interesting stuff. He loves Israel and has an organization that raises money and gives it to groups that are working with victims of terror in the Middle East. He is a very pro-Israel force in the Christian world. He's also worked with the Steve Forbes campaign and for Rush Limbaugh, along with the people that Mr. Sherberg mentioned.